Iodine-Rich Semiconducting Polymer Nanoparticles for CT/Fluorescence Dual-Modal Imaging-Guided Enhanced Photodynamic Therapy

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising technique for cancer therapy, providing good therapeutic efficacy with minimized side effect. However, the lack of oxygen supply in the hypoxic tumor site obviously restricts the generation of singlet oxygen (O-1(2)), thus limiting the efficacy of PDT. So far, the strategies to improve PDT efficacy usually rely on complicated nanosystems, which require sophisticated design or complex synthetic procedure. Herein, iodine-rich semiconducting polymer nanoparticles (SPN-I) for enhanced PDT, using iodine-induced intermolecular heavy-atom effect to elevate the O-1(2) generation, are designed and prepared. The nanoparticles are composed of a near-infrared (NIR) absorbing semiconducting polymer (PCPDTBT) serving as the photosensitizer and source of fluorescence signal, and an iodine-grafted amphiphilic diblock copolymer (PEG-PHEMA-I) serving as the O-1(2) generation enhancer and nanocarrier. Compared with SPN composed of PEG-b-PPG-b-PEG and PCPDTBT (SPN-P), SPN-I can enhance the O-1(2) generation by 1.5-fold. In addition, SPN-I have high X-ray attenuation coefficient because of the high density of iodine in PEG-PHEMA-I, providing SPN-I the ability of use with computed tomography (CT) and fluorescence dual-modal imaging. The study thus provides a simple nanotheranostic platform composed of two components for efficient CT/fluorescence dual-modal imaging-guided enhanced PDT.